KDE Frameworks 6 Discussions Light Up With Qt 6.0 Coming Next Year

[smitty3268]

In order to develop closed source apps for KDE, you really do need a QT commercial license, which costs more than an MSDN subscription from Microsoft (last I checked).

I'm pretty sure that's not a goal of the project.

[betam4x]

I'm pretty sure that's not a goal of the project.

I am well aware of that. The same with the GNOME project. For Linux to succeed on the desktop developers (and companies) should be free to develop applications using whatever license they wish. For QT to charge more for a license than Microsoft of all companies is asinine. Linux desktop will never see maintstream success until there is a cultural shift. No, the majority of us will avoid QT altogether and use other frameworks.

QT itself could solve this problem by changing it's licensing scheme to be like Unity3D. Less than 100 grand a year? No fees....come to think of it, even Unity3D costs less.

My point is there needs to be a balance. One that allows commercial developers to develop great software that can be sold closed source, and one that allows open source software to proliferate. One need only look at Microsoft Windows and how it owns the desktop and corporate environments to see why this is true.

Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and I love open source, but as a developer who's had to tangle with licensing, it has turned me off to the point where I'm considering writing my own toolkit with much more favorable licensing terms.

[boxie]

I am well aware of that. The same with the GNOME project. For Linux to succeed on the desktop developers (and companies) should be free to develop applications using whatever license they wish. For QT to charge more for a license than Microsoft of all companies is asinine. Linux desktop will never see maintstream success until there is a cultural shift. No, the majority of us will avoid QT altogether and use other frameworks.

QT itself could solve this problem by changing it's licensing scheme to be like Unity3D. Less than 100 grand a year? No fees....come to think of it, even Unity3D costs less.

My point is there needs to be a balance. One that allows commercial developers to develop great software that can be sold closed source, and one that allows open source software to proliferate. One need only look at Microsoft Windows and how it owns the desktop and corporate environments to see why this is true.

Don't get me wrong, I love KDE and I love open source, but as a developer who's had to tangle with licensing, it has turned me off to the point where I'm considering writing my own toolkit with much more favorable licensing terms.

wow, I just went looking at the pricing for QT and it is.. well.. for me.. expensive! I can understand why you would balk a the pricing

[Baguy]

They actually have a KDE Plasma LTS version that they do that with and the normal KDE Plasma that we read about on Phoronix. I know that at least Suse 15.1/SLED uses it.

5.12 is their current LTS version and is still seeing updates and fixes; 5.16 is the current stable version; 5.17 is the current beta version. I wish Manjaro would offer LTS like they offer the stable and beta versions.

5.18 will be a LTS as well, supporting QT 5.12.3.

[Morty]

If you are a commercial company developing closed source software, the pricing og Qt is a non issue. In a commercial setting, if you can't handle that you should reconsider your business model. Sine you are inn a position where it does not make financial sense. Compared to oder cost for a company the price og Qt is small. Like the cost of a decent developer for a week or so. Paying for a quality tool making the developer more efficient makes ut great commercial decission.

Besides both Qt and KDE libs are LGPL, so this is an non issue anyway.

[deabru]

In order to develop closed source apps for KDE, you really do need a QT commercial license,

Not true. Qt is LGPL, so...

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/lgpl.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License

[Jabberwocky]

Surprised to hear some programs are still using KHTML. I'm used to the speed of change relative to commercially supported (web) frontends and frameworks.

[betam4x]

Quite a few people don't understand the LGPL. You can't statically link QT, nor can you modify QT while restricting others from modifying it. For example, Microsoft coult never port Office to QT.

[Morty]

Quite a few people don't understand the LGPL. You can't statically link QT, nor can you modify QT while restricting others from modifying it. For example, Microsoft coult never port Office to QT.

That way well be, but I think most here do so no need to make straw men.

No static linking for non GPL applications, that is given. But static linking is not an requirement for commercial applications.
And besides, depending on what parts of Qt you use, dynamic linking may save you some grief as it's the preferred way.

Why ever would you modify your toolkit and want to restrict others from doing so?
As a application developer, if you modify your libraries you do so to fix a bug or add some missing functionality. Both cases your best option is to upstream the changes, then you can save the resources required to maintain them. Worst case you simply have to make them accessible to whoever you distribute your application to. In any case it does not matter, the value is in the application not in the toolkit.

And a huge application like MS Office would not use static linking in any case, so that argument does not make any sense. If you not mean QuickTime(QT) the old Apple multimedia application, I don't think MS could port Office to it.